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Since January 7th, I have not had any processed foods, no chips, no breads, no starchy carbs, and eating very clean! I have lost 12# and have been feeling great. I have had no desire to go back to my bad habits…….UNTIL THIS PAST WEEKEND.

I am not sure what exactly happened this past weekend!?! I had done my food prep. I haven’t been terribly hungry and haven’t felt deprived at all. I feel great! —-BUT SOMETHING HAPPENED!

On Thursday I ate very clean, as I normally do. The typical day of having a protein shake in the morning, eating a colorful lunch (salad this day), drinking plenty of water and green tea. I even had some amazing workouts again this week and hit two new PRs (Personal Records) on two lifts that completely make me mental and freak me out. All was going well. But Thursday night, I got home a little late and didn’t want to prepare another thing chicken or fish so I had a few gluten free (but processed) meatballs for dinner. (This is what I had made for my kiddos). Two hours later I felt very full and bloated. I have felt full and bloated all weekend because of it. Which has started a bad weekend of bad choices……

Friday I hardly ate…which is just as bad for you than eating too much (but I just didn’t feel 100%). However, my husband did take me to lunch and I had fajitas (no tortillas). I DID CAVE and have 8 chips with salsa:-( For dinner I had a lettuce wrapped burger. Not a terrible day, but definitely had my share of cheats and didn’t eat enough and not enough veggies. But Saturday, I failed miserably. I woke, with a little-off tummy….and decided I must have “something” clean to eat to get my day started off right. I didn’t feel like eating but knew I needed something. I had another Metagenics *balanced* shake with three slices of bacon. Felt ok. I worked out at home afterwards and that seemed to help my stomach. I had a funeral to attend two hours away. I had already planned on stopping at Chickfila for a salad to go. But I was traveling with my dad and was talking and missed my exit:-( I would have normally just waited on getting a lunch later with a better choice, but knew my dad was hungry. We ended up stopping at Wendy’s. I made a choice to get nuggets (processed and fried). No option of fruit here and I had no veggies 🙁 Then on the way home, I stopped to get groceries for the upcoming week. Meanwhile, at home, my husband had made some green chili chicken taco fillings. I had this for dinner, but with a half carb balanced tortilla. **I NEVER eat tortillas anymore!!?!?! The rest of the evening I wanted and craved bad foods. I wanted chips (thankful we had none). I wanted candy (thankful we had none). I wanted wine (had some). And had wafer cookies as my snack of bad choice.

So, as you can tell…this weekend hasn’t been clean or sugar free at all. I have felt miserable too…. But even after feeling miserable, I am amazed that my body and mind still wanted more bad foods. I know that adding some of these foods to my diet and the lack of eating enough threw off my blood sugars. Which has in turn made me want more of the bad stuff. It’s a terrible cycle that I can get stuck in if I don’t be careful.

My weekend was not a failure but a reminder of how I “could” fail if I don’t recognize the mistakes and what led me to them. I must make a conscience effort to changes to recognize and learn from my mistakes this week–and avoid them the next time I am tempted.

Today I am choosing to celebrate in the fact that I can decide to rebound nicely from this and clean this diet up immediately….STARTING NOW!

If you have been doing the Sugar Detox with me or have been contemplating doing it on your own…you may be asking WHY? What’s the purpose of the Sugar Detox and why is Sugar such a “bad” thing??

Here are some facts about sugar to help support your decision in doing the detox….

A statistic relating to sugar, especially when that close to 70% of America is overweight.

1822: Americans consume 45 grams of sugar every five days, or the amount of sugar in a can of coke.

2012: Americans consume 756 grams of sugar every five days, or 130 POUNDS of sugar a year.

***I have been logging my food on MyFitnessPal and am getting around 50grams of sugar a day on a DETOX!!!!! WOW!

Sugar has continued to play an increasingly more prominent role in our food. It’s not just sugary foods like candy and cookies either, but sugar has made its way into practically EVERYTHING we eat…which I am sure you are more aware of now!

Sugar is a carbohydrate.

If it ends in a “ose,” it’s gonna be a sugar.

There are different kinds of sugar, starting with simple sugars (called monosaccarides) like glucose, fructose, and galactose. Then there are also more complex forms (called disaccharides) like sucrose, maltose, and lactose.

*** A cheat sheet to naturally occurring sugars:

Let’s start with glucose: It occurs naturally in plants and fruits, and is a byproduct of photosynthesis. In our bodies glucose can be burned as energy or converted into glycogen (essentially: liver and muscle fuel). Our bodies can actually produce glucose when needed.

Next, fructose! This is fruit sugar, occurring naturally in…you guessed it, fruit! It also occurs naturally in cane sugar and honey, and is incredibly sweet.

Onto the more complex sugars, starting with Sucrose. This sugar is found in the stems of sugar cane, the roots of sugar beet, and can be found naturally alongside glucose in certain fruits and other plants.

Last but not least, we have lactose, which is essentially milk sugar! This is something that is created as result of a process happening in our bodies: children possess the enzyme necessary to break down the molecule into lactose to be used by the body, while some adults don’t. These are the lactose intolerant folks.—–So, we have a few key types of sugar. But where does sugar actually come from? It is USUALLY created as a result of the processing of one of two types of plants: sugar beets or sugar cane. These plants are harvested, processed, and refined to eventually resemble the white sugar you’ve come to know and love (or loathe). This sugar has absolutely no nutritional value: it’s just pure, refined, sugar.

When you consume sugar, your body has two options on how to deal with it:

Burn it for energy. WEEEEE!

Convert to fat and store it in your fat cells. BOOOOO!

Depending on your genetic predisposition, your body might be better equipped to process sugar as energy, or you might be more likely to store it as fat. Think of this like you think of people with faster metabolisms vs. people with slower metabolisms.

***Problem is, there’s a LOT more room for fat storage, and a lot less room to burn the sugar as energy.

So, we have this sugar in our body and blood stream. What happens next? When your pancreas detects a rush of sugar, it releases a hormone called insulin to deal with all of that excess sugar.

Insulin helps regulate that level of sugar in our blood; the more sugar in the blood stream, the more insulin is released. Insulin helps store all of this glucose in the liver and muscles as glycogen and in fat cells .

Now, oftentimes our body struggles to get that balance right (with us putting way too much sugar in our system very quickly). TOO much insulin is released, which ultimately results in our blood sugar dropping below normal levels.

This is called hypoglycemia, essentially a sugar crash: Our bodies respond by telling us: WE WANT SUGAR.

So we cram sugar down our throats and the process starts again (does this sound familiar to you?)

Unfortunately, the more often this process takes place (the more sugar you consume), the more severe the blood sugar spike is, and the more insulin is required. This means it becomes easier and easier to skip using sugar as energy, and go straight to extra insulin and fat storage.

How is Sugar Hidden on the Label?? (Read the label AND the ingredients. Here is a list of words that are disguised words for sugar on your labels).

Agave nectar

Brown sugar

Cane crystals

Cane sugar

Corn sweetener

Corn syrup

Crystalline fructose

Dextrose

Evaporated cane juice

Organic evaporated cane juice

Fructose

Fruit juice concentrates

Glucose

High-fructose corn syrup

Honey

Invert sugar

Lactose

Maltose

Malt syrup

Molasses

Raw sugar

Sucrose

Sugar

Syrup

Why do they change the name of sugar? Because nutritional labels are required by law to list their most prominent ingredients first. By putting two or three different types of sugar in the food (and calling them each a different name), they can spread out the sugar across three ingredients and have it show up much further down the list! Tricky tricky tricky!

Forward this to any friends “wondering why you have been so picky at the table for 21 days.” 😉

***These are just a few facts that I think will help you be able to support your decision for do the 21 Day Sugar Detox. And also help you choose and healthier diet for you and your family!!

I am two days in and feeling pretty darn good so far. My WOD (the crossfit word for “workout of the day”) was a gaser. Not sure if it was a gaser due to the programming or if being 36 hours into the the detox is already taking an effect. Or perhaps it was BOTH?!?!?! 🙂

I did, however, find myself going to the pantry often to just grab ‘something’. This is totally a bad habit that has apparently come back. Luckily, nothing is in there that I want…..at least not yet!! HA!

What does my diet look like so far….

PreWorkout: A slice of Canadian Bacon, ⅓ green banana, and 3 almonds

Post Workout: **This was more like lunch as it was later today than normal** ⅓ banana, 6 baby carrots with 1 tbs of crab dip, chicken breast pieces.

Late Lunch: Mixed Green Salad with turkey pieces

Late Afternoon: Homemade Veggie Juice with some pistachios

Dinner: Chicken Breast with Green Beans

I am also drinking lots of Herbalife Green Tea before 2pm and taking Probiotics, BioCleanse, and Xfactor from Plexus. And if I double workout I will take NightTime Recovery from Advocare. ***Yap, my supplements are all over the place, but that’s what works for me!!! :-).
The key to not fading too much from this detox is to be sure you still get your calories in. Don’t skip meals or snacks. You want to ideally eat something every 3-4hours, if possible. It helps stabilize your blood sugar levels and helps the metabolism!!!